At the incessant crash and rumble of the storm outside, you jolt awake, shaking off the tendrils of confusing, light dozes. Your bed is positioned by the windows that you forgot to close; slashes of lighting illuminate your untidy room, spatters of rain fly in. You go to close it but stop, leaning halfway out, enraptured by the storm. You are overwhelmed with an almost indescribable feeling, the feeling a fierce storm brings. A churning stomach, bewildered eyes, a sense of powerlessness against this great beast that claims the sky as its own before slinking away, defeated by the dawn that battles through the cloud.

You look delightedly down at your garden, too disconcerted and too ecstatic to care that it’s being torn slowly apart. Lawn chairs overturned, plants uprooted, great streaming lakes of rainwater covering the whole thing like a second skin. You catch only glimpses, snapshots, being lit by random flickers of lightning.

However, just as suddenly as your strange happiness at this beautiful storm began; it turns into fear.

The lightning stops, leaving you drenched in suffocating blackness. The rain, as if controlled by a dimmer switch, becomes a gentle patter on the windows. Left is the howling wind, and you. And the silhouette in your garden.

Half of you is absolutely certain of what you saw, glorified for two or three seconds by lightning. A man. Standing there. Watching you. An immaculate, murderous smile etched onto his grubby face. And in his hand was something positively glowing in the sudden light. Something in the shape of a knife.

Your more rational side laughs incredulously, tells you that that is impossible. It was a trick of the light, you’re exhausted. For all you know, that’s a scarecrow placed there for a cruel prank.

But you have to know for sure.

You turn away from the window and reach into the drawers by your bed, fingers fumbling for your flashlight that you keep there for emergencies or blackouts. You click it into life, letting the beam of light swoop onto the darkness, rake through the night in pursuit of your fears come true.

There is no-one.

You force a laugh at yourself. But in your shaking hand, the light catches something that makes your involuntary smile freeze, makes the hairs on the back of your neck creep up to attention. Craning your neck, you see that your back door is wide open. It swings wildly in the wind.